Russia has postured its forces defensively for conflict with the United States and NATO, seeking to buy space and time rather than achieve conventional dominance, because Russia understands it is dramatically outspent (17-to-1 by NATO), dramatically outnumbered (five-to-one in aircraft), and lacks good answers for sustained conventional conflict against superior capabilities.

Russia collapsed and restructured a large part of its force structure in 2009-2010 reforms following the Georgia war, converting divisions to brigades that are maintained at considerably higher readiness levels than old Soviet divisions, allowing Russia to maintain a significant portion of its force ready for short notice despite being geographically spread across 11 time zones.

Russia has a draft system with conscripts serving 12-month terms mixed with professional contract soldiers serving 3-year contracts (renewable), with conscripts not being sent into combat per policy since before Georgia.

The Estonian military has a small regular force (scout battalion with armored vehicles) and relies heavily on conscription-based mobilizing reserve force, while Latvia is all-volunteer, and Lithuania is between the two approaches, having recently re-introduced conscription with more sizable regular forces.

The Donbas conflict included use of released Ukrainian prisoners, private military groups, and little green men operating in unconventional ways, but when conducting specific operations like airport seizure, Russian forces took on more conventional military appearance.

Russian motor rifle brigades employ a radically different force structure than NATO formations, with two to three artillery battalions per brigade (approaching 1-to-1 ratio) versus NATO's single artillery battalion per armor brigade combat team, reflecting Russian doctrine emphasizing indirect fire as primary means of achieving military objectives.

Unlike the situation with China in the 2000s, there was no sound baseline understanding in 2004-2015 of current Russian military capabilities and how those capabilities informed Russian thinking about potential conflict with NATO, necessitating the RAND scorecard study to establish that foundation.

When higher-technology adversaries degrade through warfare games scenario, conflict often devolves into lower-technology warfare, forcing high-tech militaries to fight at degraded capability levels they do not prefer.

The Crimean operation was essentially an unopposed relocation exercise led by uniformed insignia-less military officers in their standard roles, not truly hybrid warfare despite the lack of insignia.